Kal Penn has a new series — made with his Harold and Kumar collaborators, Hayden Schlossberg and Jon Hurwitz — in the works for ABC. According to Deadline, it follows Penn’s character, a wannabe NPR reporter who instead takes a position at a Fox News-ish channel. (The show, titled Fair and Balanced, gets its name directly from Fox’s slogan.) The content of the show is inspired by Penn’s own time in Washington, D.C. where he worked both for Obama’s National Arts Policy Committee and as an associate director of the White House Office of Public Engagement; he’s also a VICE News correspondent. In other ABC-related news, the showrunner of the new Muppets series is leaving, and the second half of the first season is allegedly being considered a relaunch (which may not be a bad thing).
Credence, a film by British director Mike Buonaiuto, is described on its Indiegogo account as “the first Sci-Fi of its kind to challenge the way gay characters are portrayed in film.” As Wired explains, the crowdfunding effort proved to be a success (fueled by a clear desire to end the dearth of rich portrayals within the genre), as the film earned 370 percent of its initial goal, and was recently completed: it launched this week on Vimeo on Demand. The 30 minute apocalyptic film sees a couple trying to send their daughter into space in the last evacuation of a dying Earth. Watch the trailer here.
You may not have known that Gummo/Mr. Lonely/Spring Breakers director Harmony Korine is also a painter of massive abstractions. But because of the disappearance of one such ($120,000) massive abstraction (made using masking tape, squeegees and house paint) from the lobby of a building in Manhattan this week, his painting career is being publicized all over the web. In other (pop culture-adjacent) art news, The Creators Project published an interview with Jay Howell, the illustrator behind Sanjay and Craig and the Belcher family on Bob’s Burgers, detailing his “colorful career and work.”
333sound released their list of the next books in the 33 1/3 series. The upcoming releases of books based on albums will come from 16 proposals (selected from 605); Highlights include a book by Clare Nina Norelli on Angelo Badalamenti’s Twin Peaks soundtrack, a book by Amy Gentry on Tori Amos’ Boys For Pele, one by Andrew Barker on The Pharcyde’s Bizarre Ride II the Pharcyde, and one by Emily MaCkay about Björk’s Homogenic. Check out the 333sound website for the full list.